


we're all just stories after all

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: wintercompanion, Complicated Relationships, Immortality, M/M, Multi, Romance, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old Canish epic speaks of en epic love story. The Doctor seems unimpressed and Jack thinks it's missing the good parts. Rose thinks it may be important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're all just stories after all

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the wintercompanion Winter/Summer Holidays 2015 for the prompt "5, poetry, telemetry, Jupiter! Jupiter!, Canish" and first published [over here](http://wintercompanion.livejournal.com/249661.html).
> 
> You can also read and comment on Livejournal [here](http://navaan.livejournal.com/211242.html).

“If this is ancient Canish, why can I read it?”

The Doctor looked at her as if she was that especially dull pupil holding up the progress of the whole class, but Rose was getting used to that look and just looked at him expectantly. “Rose Tyler, you've been travelling with me for how long?” He opened his arms wide to indicate the interior of the Tardis. 

“Ah, yeah, right, Tardis,” she said and rolled her eyes. Jack just smiled at her behind the Doctor’s back. They were in this together; the two stupid human kids travelling with the ancient, wise and sometimes pretty childish Time Lord from Gallifrey. It felt good to finally have someone along for the ride who was taking most of the time hopping and adventuring in stride, who was in awe of the wonders they came across, but wasn't constantly in awe of the Doctor. The Doctor, she found, needed that: People who looked up to him and asked the stupid questions, but who were thinking for themselves, who were ready to disagree with him if he needed them to.

“So, what’s it about?” Jack asked. “Something interesting?”

She pursed her lips and smiled at him, grasping for the right words to describe the stuffy verses and convoluted story full of metaphors and legendary heroes. Coming to a conclusion she said slowly: “It’s a bit Shakespeare. But I think it’s a love story.” 

“You think? Does that mean they glossed over the _interesting_ parts?” he asked and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. 

The Doctor made a long-suffering noise and very firmly didn’t look at them.

“Don’t know yet.” She grinned at Jack and went back to her reading. She'd never been a fan of old prose or Camelot style legends, but something about this story just spoke to her and she wanted to figure out why it seemed so important.

* * *

“Doctor?” she asked and both men look up at her startled. She hadn’t been paying attention to whatever it was they were doing, but apparently they had been focused on something else, the Tardis, repairs. They often did repairs together as if they had never done anything else. The Tardis herself was humming happily and Rose supposed they were still hovering somewhere outside of time and for once there was no danger and no running, just these two men talking in hushed tones, teasing each other in a friendly manner, working together.

It’s just like the easy companionship she was just reading about - of the alien god-king and his mysterious lover; understanding without saying the things that were important.

“You’re the last Time Lord left in existence, yeah?” she asked, keeping her voice as level as possible, but trying to not sound too careful. The Doctor hated pity, more than talking about the dark spots in his past. Jack quirked an eyebrow in her general direction before looking back at the man in the black leather jacket, who just shrugged and made an affirmative sound.

“And there are no aliens who have.. I don’t know? Similar names?”

“Similar names to what?”

“Sovereign of the Times,” she recited.

“Sounds like Time Lord,” Jack agreed. 

The Doctor shrugged. “It’s an epic romance. Some magician meddled with time travel technology. Stranger things have happened.”

“He’s like a Merlin to the immortal god’s Arthur in the story.”

“Immortal god?” Jack asked and wrinkled his nose. “What kind of rubbish story is that you’re reading? I thought it was a love story.”

She shrugged. “Romantic, adventure type. The god-king and the magician have a wild romance going under everyone's noses. It's epic. The good parts were omitted, though.”

“Naturally,” Jack said and shook his head. “What use is there in writing about love without the dancing?” He winked at her and the Doctor looked between them with an unhappy frown.

“I was just wondering,” she said and made sure to lock gazes with the Doctor, “because this Sovereign of the Times, the magician the king falls in love with, is described as a young man with old eyes - and his name is the Healer.”

Jack snorted.

But the Doctor looked intrigued for the first time. Slowly he walked over to where Rose was sitting and looked over her shoulder at the page. She pointed at the section where the lover’s name was mentioned for the first time and watched as the Doctor’s eyes were scanning the page. It was usually both easy and hard to read him - easy at least to realize if he was in a good or bad mood, even if you had no idea what he was thinking about. Now his face was neutral, but his eyes were intensely focused on the text. “G’run’valach,” the Doctor intoned and Rose knew it was the name of the character spoken in it’s original language. “The Healer,” he nodded. “Literally means ‘Man who fixes things’.” 

“Sounds like you,” Jack teased as he leaned on the console, patting it, watching the two of them bent over the book as if there was no more interesting sight in the whole wide world. Rose nearly blushed.

But the Doctor just shrugged. “Don’t remember this. If it’s me it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Young man with old eyes?” she asked. “What does it mean? How can that not have happened yet if it's you?”

“Poetic licence,” he answered, but his eyes were still scanning the text.

* * *

“Where did you even find the book?” Jack asked her later, when they were both walking back to their rooms. The Doctor’s mood had shifted a little back there, tumbling him into one of his more silent phases that always made her nervous. She loved it when he grinned that boyish grin that meant excitement and happiness and lust for adventure and life. His silence always meant brooding and she wanted to put an end to it immediately.

Jack, who hadn’t been with them long, seemed uneasy about it, too.

“I found it on the Herlarian market. I don’t know why I bought it. Seemed important at the time.”

“Hmm.” Jack shrugged. “Just a silly romance, huh?”

Both of them weren’t convinced of that anymore. The Doctor had been too interested. “Think he had a god-like lover on a planet far, far away?”

“The much more interesting question is how do we make him notice, that he can have all that right here and now?” Jack asked, sultry smile in place and eyes twinkling.

She giggled. Jack would be an outrageous flirt to the last. She loved him for it.

“Read me some of that,” he demanded, when they reached her door and it was time to say goodnight. The demand was so inappropriate and strange that the only thing she could do was nod and invite him in.

They lounged on her bed together, not touching, reading the final verses of the story. 

“A volcano erupts. The Healer is never seen again. A lonely king waits for his lover to return and then just vanishes after an impossibly long rule?” Jack asked and looked disappointed. “They would have been better off writing porn.”

“Immortal and all-knowing he ruled Ersgaria wisely for two-thousands of years. His family still now holds up his name and waits for his return, for the immortal god will forever protect us,” she read out loud from the addendum of the book. “But the immortal god waited in loneliness and sometimes despair for the return of his lover, the one true love, the one who was like him.”

“Sweet.”

“On a bright morning of Gursten Tide a man with piercing eyes and grey hair appeared at court and demanded to see the king alone. A girl was with him, beautiful and well behaved, clearly his daughter. The king ordered them to be left alone in the throne room and the court expected the men to arrange a marriage for the daughter and second queen for the immortal god, another companion to quench his loneliness. But none of them were ever seen again. The throne room was found empty. The immortal god never returned.

“But he will, when he is needed.”

Jack chuckled. “That sounds ominous. No speculation about what happened? Just poof and they're gone.”

“It’s just a legend, I guess? Maybe there were Time Lords involved. Maybe the godlike king was a Time Lord, too, and it was time for him to go home?”

“Maybe he found his lover again,” Jack said. “Happily ever after sounds much better than waiting in loneliness and despair.”

* * *

Thousands of long years later, in a time long before Rose Tyler is ever born, a king was sitting in his throne room. With a deep frown Jack stared at his psychic paper. “Come on, Doctor, you promised,” he muttered.

4000 years he’d given this planet his all, after he had stumbled right into an old prophecy and uncovered an evil plot by an alien race to enslave the Canish population. Instead he’d allowed himself to be put into a position where he could help their culture and technology along to get to a point where they would no longer need the Doctor or him to interfere on their behalf. It had all been okay, as long as the Doctor had dropped by regularly.

But 200 years without a word was quite enough. Jack was tired of waiting.

“Come on,” he whispered. “You promised to come pick me up when the last parts of that stupid story have played out as written.”

But the psychic paper remained blank.

It had been that way for years now.

No sign, no word of his Doctor.

He’d grown worried.

The Doctor was always at the heart of trouble and he had been sitting here waiting for so long that it was hard to remember what it even was like to travel the universe freely. To have the Doctor at his side. To be understood. What if something had happened to the Doctor and he hadn’t been around to help?

His young husband and wife were looking at him as if they are worried.

They had no idea, of course, that Jack had accepted the newest arranged marriages, preparing for his own departure, leaving a pair of legitimate rulers behind to make their own destiny without godlike king Jack. The children had formed their own families long ago and the last thing Jack wanted was to plunge the world into a new civil war.

Suddenly the throne room's wide doors flew open and Jack sat up straighter, staring at the guards sternly.

But the man behind them, stepping in with an unimpressed expression, fixing him where he sat with a piercing stare, caught his attention right away. A girl he’d never seen before, cute, with straight brown hair and inquisitive eyes, walked beside him, half-smiling.

“Leave us,” Jack ordered, before anybody could even announce the Doctor and his companion, before anyone had even so much as said a word. “I’ve been waiting for this emissary.”

Nobody dared to disagree. Jack had been a benevolent king, had not been overly harsh when he didn't have too, but everyone knew of his immortal life, of the magic and mystery he commanded. To them he was more than just a king, even if he had treated ruling more like commanding a much bigger branch of Torchwood. 

It was time for this all to be finally over.

Being worshipped had it's upsides. But he was more than a little tired of it. 

The Doctor looked after the scurrying courtiers, after his king and queen as they left the hall with a small courtesy towards him. As they left he made a disdainful noise and turned to Jack. “You married _again_ ,” he said.

“As it was written,” he said piously and raised an eyebrow. Surely the Doctor hadn't expected him to stay lonely for hundreds of years. Finally the door fell closed again and he jumped up, throwing the crown away before he had even made it down the steps leading up to the throne. “Finally!”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, not sounding sorry in the least and Jack took a moment to appreciate the new form, the new face and hair.

“You’re not sorry, but I see you’ve had some changes going on in your life, so I suppose I can forgive you. But now let’s go,” he said, making it to the Doctor’s side, grabbing him by the arm to greet him with a lover’s kiss, but the man looked grim. 

“There will be absolutely no hugging, when we’re on the run.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “New rules? Again? I had just caught up with the old ones.” He smiled at the young woman the Doctor had brought. “He’s always being difficult.”

“Yeah, he is, that one.” 

He held out a hand. “I’m Jack,” he said.

She shook it. “Clara.”

“If you’re quite finished with saying hello,” the Doctor grumbled, “we can go back to getting away! Or would you rather stay king for the rest of your immortal life?”

Finally Jack got in close enough to grab hold of the Doctor and kiss him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said after, breathlessly. “I was so worried.”

“I’m here now. Nothing to worry about.”

“I’ll get my happily ever after now, yes?”

“There’s no such thing.”

Clara chuckled. “Not with him.”

“Beats waiting in loneliness and despair.”

“You didn’t look lonely or desperate. Husband and wife,” the Doctor grumbled.

He shrugged. “The way I remember it you got married without me, too!”

Finally they were running through corridors, making sure nobody would see them. Clara leading the way as they bantered behind her.

As he reached the Tardis he knew he was coming home.

The new, old Doctor looked at him expectantly. “Where do you want to go?”

“Just let me stay with you for a while. I’ve been waiting for so long.”

A court nod was his only answer. 

He smiled. He was with his love again.

The story had an end now.

But for them it was all far from over.

He wondered for a moment what Rose would have thought about their messed up epic love story without end. 

She would probably have cheered them on, he thought fondly. 

“What are you still smiling about?” the Doctor asked.

“Fond memories,” he said.

“You’re not going to write the uncut version of that epic, Jack.”

“It would make a good read.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Why do I put up with you?”

Clara, who had been silently watching them for this whole time, just grinned: “You said he was important.”

Jack’s own grin widened in response. “Important, huh? Not impossible? You called me worse things.”

“Important, impossible,” the Doctor said and made a throwaway hand gesture. “It’s all the same.”

“Isn’t it just?” Clara asked and winked at Jack.

He laughed. It was good. He was home. Back among the stars. Back with the Doctor. A new Doctor. And he was ready to fall in love all over again.


End file.
